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Last night my roommates and I were sitting in our living room watching some priceless television when we hear an all-to familiar sound. The drip drip drop of water coming through our ceiling fan and bathtub. I’m sick of it, really. If I could, I would turn the water off to the woman who lives above us. Ridiculous.

I’m now watching the Today show, and they’re talking to a woman who is in charge of the Ford Models, and they asked her “Can you tell if someone will make it when they walk in the door?” She promptly replies, “Yes, and personality has nothing to do with it. You can tell if their features will work right away.” It’s funny because the woman wasn’t so beautiful. Who decides what is beauty, what is sexy, what is model-accepted? Couldn’t we just change the cameras or like something else in a model? Is it really just cheaper to make smaller clothes? Less fabric? Last night Phillip and I were having a discussion about gay men and their roles in defining masculinity/femininity. For if we are truly “acculturated” to think of certain things as masculine or feminine, these ideas must come from somewhere. Ideas of masculinity and femininity used to be learned in a setting such as Dance lessons, where one learned proper ettiquete, and ways to be masculine or feminine. Now, we look to television.

The idea of the feminine comes from the fashion. Who is, for the most part, in charge of fashion? The gay male is in many cases the head of fashion. There have always been dressmakers, costume designers, drapers, dance teachers, etc. The straight male is often “in charge” of the realm of masculinity, whereas the gay male is relegated to that of femininity. The ebb and flow of homophobia in western culture (and non-western cultures for that matter) is a good measure of the level of masculinity in a society. The less homophobic a culture is, the less gendered a society will seem. The recent rise of “metrosexuality” is, in my humble opinion, an attempt to degender a certain demographic.

As Phillip put it, the straight male is the one who loses. He has three options.1) He has sex with a gay male2) He lets the gay male define masculinity3) He defines masculinity, leaving the gay male to define femininity and what is sexy to them.

I leave you with this thought. I am not trying to take away power from women, by any means, in this theory. It is just interesting where we learn our gender stereotypes? Are gay men acting like women, or are women acting like gay men? When will we all realize that gender stereotyping is just a waste of energy that we could be using to save the environment?